Initial Research into Forms and Conventions

For this part of my research, I chose three magazines with different styles of genres; electro, indie and jazz. I then compared the audiences, main contents and brand identity for each of the magazines. I did this to help me understand the different conventions for magazines, the way they put themselves across to a certain audience and how they do this. This will help me to create a new and different style for my magazine which challenges the genre's of mainstream magazines, eg; only a certain type of person can listen to this style of music.

The first magazine I studied was NME magazine. I found that this magazine was very much for the modern day music lover, who loves band such as Owl City or Jersey Boys. They will enjoy unconventional music and are probably hedonistic and on the jicnar scale they would be a/b. I would say the magazine is upmarket as although it likes to project a grungey, individual style they also have a very sleek look and have interviews with upmarket bands such as Babyshambles. The contents of the magazine shows interviews with indie artists such as Jarvis Cocker, Jack Penate and Patrick Wolf. This shows that this magazine is a respectable one for young music lovers, possibly 16-20.

The second magazine was based around electro, technical music; ATM. It represented an audience who were definately hedonist, like to party possibly in clubs while listening to underground electro music such as Alix Perez or Underground and were possibly 16-19. The magazine was a-c on the jicnar scale. They have features on clubbing, fashion and club based festivals in places such as Ibitha. Their audience is definately the happy go lucky, party girl.

The final magazine I looked at was entitled Jazz. Obviously, it was based around Jazz and the cover implicated that it was based around more soul and jazz rather than smooth, blues style jazz. On the jicnar scale I would say the audience of this magazine would be around a-c, it is an upmarket magazine for serious and passionate music lovers who like slightly older, less fashionable music such as Jaar Van Bezeiling. The audience was be traditionalists, possibily 30-40 or possibly 19-30 if they enjoy niche style,vintage music. The contents of the magazine gives information about music,rather than the celebrity performer.